of which do not attain to so high a degree of excellence elsewhere farther north than the Carolinas. Peaches, apples, and prunes of superior quality delighted the eye. Peaches had been marketed continuously, from the same orchards, from the 15th of July to the i5th of October. There were hanging in the pavilion diplomas awarded at the New Orleans Exposition to citizens in this valley for exhibits of the best qualities and greatest varieties of corn, wheat, oats, barley, and hops.
The advantage to the farmer of rainless harvesting months is obvious. The wheat is all harvested by headers, leaving the straw on the ground for its enrichment. Thus binding, hauling, and sacking are largely dipensed with. The grain, when threshed, is piled on the ground in jute sacks, saving the expense of granaries and hauling to and from them. These jute sacks cost for each bushel of grain about 3 cents, which is far less than farmers elsewhere are subjected to in hauling their grain to and from granaries and through a system of elevators until it reaches shipboard.
Here, as well as in Western Washington, most vegetables grow to an enormous size, and are of superior'quality when compared with the same varieties grown in the East. Those kinds that require much heat, as melons, tobacco, peppers, egg-plants, etc., grow to great perfection.  The root crops-beets, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, turnips, etc.- yield prodigiously on the fertile bottom-land soils, without much care besides ordinary cultivation. The table beet soon gets too large for the dinner-pot. It is nothing unusual for a garden beet to weigh ten pounds, and they often grow to eighteen or twenty pounds' weight. Mangel wurzel, the stock beet, sometimes grows to forty and fifty pounds' weight, if given room and proper cultivation. They may easily be made to produce twenty-five tons per acre on good soil. All othl r vegetables, such as parsnips, carrots, peas, beans, tomatoes, onions, cabbages, celery, and cauliflower, are perfectly at home on every farm of Eastern Washington. Market gardening is becoming quite an important pursuit, and holds out particularly high inducements to the farmer, because of the superb market now afforded by the non-producing mineral and timber regions, easily accessible in this and adjacent Territories.
There are over 2,000 square miles of arable land in this magnificent region, and there has never been a crop failure since its settlement. Outside of Government lands prices range at from $4 to $o- per acre for unimproved, and from $12 to $20 for improved lands.
Along the line of Union Pacific in this grand new empire will be found many energetic, thriving young towns, all possessing those social and educational facilities which are now a part of every Western village.
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